Define: “postmodern compromise”

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Protein Wisdom :

January 1, 2013

Define: “postmodern compromise”

n: a compromise reached on the basis of reaching a compromise and being able to say a compromise has been reached, regardless of whether the substance of the compromise actually works as a compromise in any meaningful way. See, eg., US Senate Republicans:

Early Tuesday morning, the Senate approved a scaled-down package aimed at halting historic tax hikes for most Americans and postponing across-the-board spending cuts, just hours after Congress missed a midnight deadline for action.

The Senate voted 89-8 in favor of the package, which was hastily pulled together after a late-night deal between White House and Senate Republican negotiators.

That last is what we in the business call a tell: if as a Republican Obama is praising you, you’ve done something terribly terribly wrong — both to your constituency and to your country. Mitch McConnell seems to think the percentage of those in his constituency he didn’t just sell out in order to appease the appetites of an insatiable government and a Marxist Democrat party makes his betrayal of whatever principles the GOP once stood for laudable. It isn’t. In fact, it’s repugnant — and it’s a sign of surrender.

Worse, McConnell and Senate Republicans have now kicked the can back over to Boehner, who will be in full screeching and then weeping mode today trying to twist enough arms and threaten enough conservative Republicans to go along with the “compromise” — all because it is important to Boehner and House Republicans to be seen as compromisers, regardless of what their compromise does: takes an affirmative role in raising tax rates on a portion of the population — including many small business owners — thereby weakening the private sector so that the President can exert power in a largely symbolic move to punish “the rich”.